Panic withdrawals hit Cyprus after officials announced bailout terms viewed as 'robbery' by the public, as the UK is reportedly ready to protect British depositors’ savings.

The adage ‘the best way to rob a bank is to own a bank’ has
perhaps never before held more truth than now.

On Saturday, Cypriot deposit-holders got a nasty surprise when
they learned that EU ministers and the IMF agreed to massive
bailout plan for Cyprus, which includes a one-time tax of 9.9
percent on Cypriot bank deposits that exceed 100,000 euros, as well
as a tax of 6.75 percent on smaller deposits.

The deal is part of a $13-billion (10-billion-euro) bailout
package for Cyprus – which witnessed its banking sector exposed to
the Greek financial crisis – to save the country from
insolvency.

The unprecedented decision, which appears to punish ordinary
citizens for failures in the financial system, has sparked panic
and protests as people queued up at ATM machines to rescue their
savings. Many cash machines ran out of banknotes because of the
panic withdrawals – one bank had its entrance blocked with a
bulldozer by one disgruntled customer.

To further complicate matters, Monday is a public holiday in
Cyprus, which means bank customers will have to wait until Tuesday
to access their money.

Meanwhile, the government appears to be waffling at a time when
depositors are looking for some sign of certainty that their
savings – in some cases, their life savings – will not be decimated
in what has been called a 'raid.'

The Cypriot parliament on Sunday postponed an emergency session
debating the controversial provision. Earlier, President Nicos
Anastasiades postponed an informal meeting of lawmakers called for
Sunday morning.

Several parties in the 56-member parliament, where no single
party enjoys a majority, have already said they will not support
the levy.

At least one country has already announced plans to protect
their citizens’ savings: Up to 60,000 British savers may lose
“thousands of pounds each” if the raid on personal bank holdings
gets the green light, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

According to the British paper, Britons have about £1.7 billion
in deposits in Cyprus, and could lose up to £170 million.

Cyprus banks are reportedly holding around 68 billion euro on
deposit, of which foreigners hold about 40 percent; most of these
clients are reportedly Russian nationals.

It has been estimated that Russian citizens hold between €8
billion and €35 billion in deposits in Cypriot banks, which means
individuals could lose up to €3.5 billion total.

This may account for why Cyprus did not impose a levy on non-EU
depositors, since it may have been difficult to distinguish between
Cypriot and Russian clients, Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at
the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington
told the Mail.

Kirkegaard speculated that Cypriots may eventually come to
welcome the unexpected levy, since the government “managed to
widen its tax base to include a lot of Russians.”

He compared the situation to other bailout recipients in the
Eurozone – namely Greece, Portugal and Ireland – where the native
population is forced to shoulder the burden of higher tax rates by
themselves.

Meanwhile, political analysts fear the decision to slap a tax on
savings will create panic withdrawals in other eurozone countries,
where investors may think they are next in line to receive a levy
on their holdings.

Dr Helen Szamuely from leading British think-tank, the Bruges
Group, says she isn’t sure that the bailout will help solve
Cyprus’s economic problems, and if it fails the country’s
depositors may well take to the streets in protest.

“Cyprus will have to try to make it go ahead because they really
do desperately need the bailout money unless, of course, they do
the alternative, which is actually drop out of the Euro and
probably default at some point, which will not necessarily be the
worst thing that can happen, but that doesn’t seem to appeal to any
of the governments in question,” she told RT. “So they will
have to try to make it work. Whether it actually will? I mean the
government has frozen all the accounts so that people can withdraw
no more than a certain amount of money. They can’t take their money
abroad. Although I suspect – this will come out in the next few
days, perhaps – that this was not an unexpected decision by the
finance ministers and some people would have taken their money
abroad already. Whether it’ll actually work or whether Cyprus will
erupt into riots is something we should see in the next few
days.”